Letters Debate Continues

‍‍April 3, 2014 - ג ניסן תשעד By Ebony Brown

I have one question for Ada Grodzinsky (Your Say, March 7, March 28). She categorically asserts that “it adds insult to injury to say that any place (but the land of Israel) will do” and that “no one can change history.”

I call upon her to please explain then, why it is that the two most pre-eminent Orthodox Jewish luminaries of the latter half of the 20th century – the Rav, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson – both neither resided in the land of Israel nor are even buried there.

Clearly, not for these two giants is it the case that, in her phrasing, “the present land of Israel remained the final objective.”

Moreover, we should also remember that Maimonides, the greatest Jewish thinker of all time, did not count settlement in Israel as one of the 613 commandments.

Who is more knowledgeable, not to mention authoritative, in this area? She or the Rambam, the Rav and the Rebbe?